


Run

by FireflyCity



Series: What Makes a Family - Until Dawn Pack Au [5]
Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: AU, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Alternate Universe - Wolves, Eating Disorders, F/M, Family, Family Dynamics, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Relationships, M/M, Matt-Centric, Pack AU, Pack Dynamics, Read into what you want to idk fam, Werewolf, Werewolf AU, Werewolves, Wolf AU, Wolf Pack, Wolves, abuse mention, wolf family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-21 14:36:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7391107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireflyCity/pseuds/FireflyCity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt thought he could leave it all behind. 16 years old and traveling aimlessly across the country. It was every kid’s dream. And then the dream ended.</p><p>An au where they’re all werewolves and in a pack because I like wolves. Part of my "What Makes a Family - Until Dawn Pack Au" 5/8</p>
            </blockquote>





	Run

Oo0oO

_Matt_

_Know your place._

Three words muttered in hot breaths down the back of his neck for as long as he could remember.

_Know your place._

Or else we’ll remind you. And God how they loved reminders.

_Know your place._

As if he could forget.

 _Know your place._ That is, under his father. Under his rules, under his roof, under his thumb. Always under.

Matt was nothing like his father. His father was a forthright, booming sort. The sort that knew what he wanted out of life and wouldn’t rest until he got it. Quick to anger and slow to violence, a man to which life itself was a challenge for him to best.

But Matt never liked challenges, confrontation. He was patient, analytical. Maybe a little easily frustrated, but still. Nothing like his father. When he was young he swore he never would be.

But in a family of four, Matt was the oldest kid, the only son. So whether or not he liked it, he was going to be. That’s what his father said. Because he’d be _dammed_ if he didn’t raise Matt the _right_ way. That is, confident, demanding, dominant. Just like him.

It didn’t matter to his father one bit that Matt wasn’t any of those things.

  _Bite your tongue boy._ He heard that one all too often. _Your father will make a man of you yet._ Matt had been under the impression that he _was_ a man. But he guessed not. At least, not until his father said so. Because his father was always right.

Except when he wasn’t.

 _Bite your tongue boy._ If he didn’t she’d wash it out with soap. Or at least threaten to. For all her bellicose, his mother hardly made good on her threats. Maybe part of her still saw the child in Matt. The innocence. The kindness. The _obedience_.

Matt had been shyer as a kid. Quiet, reserved, still clever but more school-focused. Less likely to step out of line. More the perfect son his parents always wanted him to be. Such a disappointment for the both of them that Matt eventually grew up.

When he did, he did so tall and lanky, hesitant and bitter. Snarky but cowardly. All bark and no bite.

His father reckoned he could straighten the boy out if he kept pushing hard enough. After all, that’s what his father had done to him. And look how _he_ had turned out.

His mother agreed. And so it was.

Oo0oO

_Know your place._

Still a boy, soon to be a man. His father was there to make sure he became the _right_ kind.

 “Eat!” Matt still remembered the way the table shook as it collided with his father’s fist. The way the silverware would tremble and glasses rattle. “You won’t get any bigger unless you _eat_.”

“But Dad I’m full!” Matt felt the protests push past his lips in uncertain squeaks.

“I don’t care. You’re not leaving the table until you eat it.”

And he did, eventually.

Nevermind that he’d sneak off to the bathroom and throw it back up again when his father wasn’t looking.

Lily knew. Of course. Lily knew everything.

Lily, his sister. The clever one.

For years she watched him play his tricks: sneak comic books under his notes, take shortcuts in his daily runs, shovel stones into his pockets for the nights their dad weighed him. For years she watched. And she didn’t say a word.

Better, she covered for him. Lily was the one who taught him to hide the comics in the sleeves of his textbooks, showed him what paths got him home fastest, pushed stones through the bathroom window while their dad went for the scale. She covered for him. And she didn’t say a word.

Not that their parents would ever believe her anyways.

For all her merits, Lily would never be the perfect daughter, in the same way that Matt would never be the perfect son. It didn’t matter how clever she was, how many scholar awards and athletics trophies she won. Until her second X changed into a Y, their father would hardly even look at her. It was all about Matt. Or, “Matthew” when his father got angry.

Matt ended up hearing his birth name a lot.

“Go to your room, Matthew.” That was one his father liked a lot. Especially after Matt got snarky again. Which was often. Joke was on his father, he preferred his room.

The joke got better when Matt first decided to sneak out.

Oo0oO

He started at 15. He left because he could, no reason otherwise. His bedroom window faced the street after all. All he had to do was pop out the screen and he was free. Free to leave. Free to go. Go where, he wasn’t sure. The first few outings the fear of his father discovering him kept him from really _going_ anywhere at all.

But of course, it was Lily who figured it out first. And she covered for him. Like always.

Matt always figured he should thank her properly. Two years younger and a far better sibling to him than he had ever been to her. He half-wondered if this was her own way of rebelling. At least if she got caught their father would finally look at her.

Under her watch, Matt stole away. Night after night.

His circle was small at first, just the few blocks around his house. Eventually it got wider, and wider, and wider still. Eventually the whole city was at his disposal. But even then it wasn’t big enough. Even then Matt couldn’t escape the overwhelming feeling that something was…missing.

And then he met Charlie.

Charlie was a drifter. Scrubby black hair, dark skin, mouth working a day-old smirk. Traveled around with some buddies he’d met a while back, romping from town to town without any real direction in life. Charlie had no rules to live by. No stupid persona he had to fill, no expectations. Charlie was his own man. And everything Matt wanted to be.

It wasn’t long before Matt snuck out _to see Charlie_ , versus merely sneaking out. Under his wing Matt got in all kinds of trouble. The best kind. The careful kind. Just careful enough not to get arrested. Just careful enough to fulfill Matt’s need for teenage rebellion. Just enough to make him feel free.

Months passed like this. Matt’s days went by as usual, faking the role of the perfect son. His nights passed leaving skidmarks across the town he grew up in. The town he couldn’t wait to leave.

When Charlie and the others told Matt they wanted to talk to him, that’s what he figured it was about. Them leaving. Them taking him with them. Away from his father and mother and all their damn expectations. It didn’t even matter to him when he got the werewolf speech instead.

“Cool.” Matt meant it. Sort of. If that’s what it took. If that’s _all_ it took.

Charlie seemed uncomfortable. He explained again, like there was something Matt was missing about it all. But he got it alright. What wasn’t there to understand about being half wolf? If they turned him they’d take him with them. Make him part of their “wolf pack”, or whatever. All that mattered was that he would leave.

Still, they hesitated. “What about your family?”

“Who cares?” Matt didn’t, that was for sure. All they cared about was the person they wanted him to be. Charlie was willing to accept him as he was. Or, as he was once turned.

“What about your sister? That, uh, Lily girl?” Charlie scraped the ground with his boot.

_What about her?_

He told them she’d be fine. In his head he thought he’d come back for her. Someday. Someday years past. Someday after his parents finally forgot him. Someday. Or maybe not at all. After all, all she wanted was their parents’ to love her. What better way than to make her an only.

“She’s fine.”

_So change me. So take me away._

And they did.

Oo0oO

_Know your place._

He thought he left it all behind. The expectations. The rules. Everything. He was so sick of always being _under._ Being a _less than_. Matt thought he was done. He wasn’t.

Because he wasn’t part of _a pack_. It was _Charlie’s pack_. Charlie called the shots, all of them. And what he said went, no matter what.

In many ways, Charlie was nothing like his father. Charlie was a prankster. Had a good sense of humor. Drank recreationally, but somehow still responsibly. He was clever. Cared about the people in his group. He was, overall a good man. Nothing like Matt’s father.

But then again, he was. Confident. Demanding. Dominant. Everything Matt’s father had wanted of him. Everything that Matt wasn’t. Everything that made Charlie the alpha and Matt _not_.

Matt thought he could leave it all behind. 16 years old and traveling aimlessly across the country. It was every kid’s dream.

Except it wasn’t. Not anymore.

Because the pack was all about rank. About the picking order. The strongest, the most dominant ate first. Led the group. Got the best of everything. Then came the beta. Then each rank, down the line. Charlie’s group was small, only 5 including Matt. And Matt was the last, the lowest rank. In wolf terms, the omega.

 _Not really_. They assured him. It was for formalities mostly, just sort of the way wolf packs are meant to be structured. They laughed about it like it didn’t mean anything. But it did. At every meal Matt was the last to eat, had the smallest voice in discussion, got the worst jobs. Matt told himself it was just because he was young. But he knew it wasn’t. It all came down to everything he wasn’t, everything he couldn’t be. Everything he never would be.

One night, he panicked. One night he left.

Oo0oO

 _Know your place_.

He couldn’t go home. Not anymore. Not now that he was half something else. Half wild. Half beast. Actually, the wolf part probably wouldn’t even bother them that much. At least they’d see him for something more than a screwup that way. But still, Matt couldn’t face them. His place was the forest. Amongst his own kind. In a pack.

Matt told himself it would be different. That different alphas would treat their own better. That there were packs out there who cared less about rank, about picking order. He was wrong. In fact, in most places it was worse.

He wasn’t always the omega. Actually, most of the time he wasn’t. But Matt was always ranked low. Sometimes it was his personality, his presence that was off. Sometimes it was his youth. His smallish-stature. His mottled brown fur. Quite often it was the fact that he was _turned_ as opposed to being born half-wolf. But it was always something.

For a while he gave up. Went to live among humans, tried getting a job and making a life for himself. He was light years from home at this point, at the very least getting recognized wasn’t something he had to worry about. But it never felt right.

Maybe it was the wolf in him. But Matt needed people. He needed a _pack_. He was greedy enough to hope for a family.

What he got was a couple of strays.

Just two. A she-wolf and a male. Sam, and Josh.

Their difference in rank was hilariously apparent. Stuck in a regular pack Josh would have _easily_ made omega, even more so then Matt. But Sam was something else. Sam, absurd as it was, was an alpha.

By all intents and purposes, she shouldn’t have been. That was actually one of the first things he said to her. You can’t be an alpha. _Not really._

Because it didn’t happen. Female betas Matt had seen plenty of, after all the alpha-beta relationship in a wolf pack seemed exceedingly common. But female alphas much less so. After all, so much of the pack dynamics relied upon difference in strength, in dominance. Traits stressed more often in males. This not even factoring in the wonder plain old misogyny did to keep females out of upper ranks.

It went almost everything he’d seen. Everything he was taught by his father. Everything even Charlie alluded to. Matt couldn’t help it, it _bothered_ him.

Sam was unfazed. In fact, she laughed it off.

“I get that a lot.”

Like it was no big deal. Like it was just _that_ natural to her. Josh seemed of similar mind, cracking a joke about it almost off-handedly.

Matt couldn’t help it, it sort of bothered him. But at that point, he had nowhere else to go. So he stayed.

Oo0oO

 _Know your place_.

Always under. Now, under Sam. For a long while it bothered him. Even as others joined them, Matt couldn’t entirely shake his discontent.

He knew it wasn’t just him. When Chris first joined he laughed at it all. But he consented. He ended up Sam’s second, although when lined side by side he towered over her. Somehow Matt was still the only one really bothered by it.

Even when Ashley fell into their group, nothing changed. In fact, Ashley, turned like himself, hardly even questioned Sam’s rule.

“Why should I?” She shrugged. “I mean, Sam’s the alpha, isn’t she?”

So they told him, over and over. Not that it became any easier to sit with.

It was when Mike joined that Matt expected real change. Mike was massive, both in wolf form and human form. He was confident, straight-forward, bold. Even without trying, he had a presence about him that _demanded_ to be felt. Surely, he would best her. Surely he would be the one to put Sam in her place.

But he didn’t. Matt saw his hesitation, surely. But he overcame it. He took the role of beta almost without dispute. Matt didn’t understand it.

More than that, he couldn’t stand it.

“Why do you listen to her?” Matt stopped Mike one day when he couldn’t take it anymore. “Why do you bare your neck to her like she’s so above you? You realize you can _be_ her?” Matt had seen all the dominance in Mike. Felt it when he first came into the pack. A flood of power and pride so overwhelming it threatened to drown him. If he had the power, why hesitate, even for a moment?

That was the lesson he’d learned from his father after all. That power belonged to the strong, the bold, the daring. That they deserved authority _because_ of their strength. On that much, Matt agreed with his dad. His father’s only mistake was thinking he could train that authority into Matt.

Seeing Mike yield to her felt like an insult. If he had the power, why hold back?

“But I don’t need to.” Mike stood his ground. “I don’t want to.”

“Why not? If you think you can best her, why even hesitate?”

“Because the pack needs her right where she is. As our alpha. _I_ _need her_. Right where she is.” Mike snapped back at him.

“But you don’t.”

“Oh yeah?” Mike raised an eyebrow. “And what do you know about me?”

“That if you fight her you could win. That everyone else here senses your power and _respects_ it.” Matt couldn’t fathom what the beta wasn’t getting at. “If you wanted to you can take over, I’ve seen it happen in other wolf packs. Why don’t you even want to try?”

“Because power isn’t everything.” Mike barred his teeth. “And you, me, this pack, _needs_ Sam as our alpha. More than you could imagine.” He seemed to remember something for a moment. Then, seeing Matt move to submit, he backed off. “Besides. In terms of power, dominance, all that? You’re dead wrong if you think Sam isn’t holding back.”

Conversation over. Just like that.

Oo0oO

_Know your place._

Under. Always under. But what did it mean to be under someone?

Different packs seemed to think it meant different things. Some seemed to think it was all about serving the alpha, carrying out their will unquestioning and bowing to their dominance. Some thought it was about hunting, fighting, defending the newer generations and seeking future prosperity of the pack as a whole. Still others thought it was simply about being under, being the blunt object put in front of pack leaders to protect them, the _actual_ important ones.

Matt’s dad would argue it was simply about serving, about a life dedicated to supporting the alpha in all their endeavors. After all, a truly great leader doesn’t simply demand respect, they deserve it. Confidence, brashness, even dominance only takes one so far, after all. A true leader, an alpha, is one worth following.

And Matt saw how Sam treated those under her. Like they weren’t under at all. Like they were friends. No, like they were family. He saw everything she did for the pack. And for the first time, he understood.

Matt was nothing like his father. But for once, he was pretty sure he agreed with him.

Oo0oO

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Damn.  
> Now I actually sort of care about Matt.
> 
> Part 5/8. Thank you all so much for the support. Part 6 will be in the works shortly, much to the delight of @marsellia_rose. Hope to see you there!


End file.
